Oooops
My god.
When I was in ninth grade, a friend of my sister and mine (mostly my sister as they were the same age and were on the same dance team) was murdered outside the high school we all attended. She was on her way to an early morning dance team practice. She had just got her driver's license and this was her first time driving herself to practice. The man that had been secretly stalking her strangled her in the parking lot and was seen by some passing kids trying to stuff her body in the car. The kids ran for help and he ditched the body and ran. If they hadn't seen that they may never have found her body. They certainly never found her killer.
Even with eye witnesses and forensic evidence.
Nothing.
I remember my sister's ex-boyfriend had detention at the school that morning. He didn't see the body but heard the police men trying to figure out what student it was. They described her as a blonde. There were only two blondes on that team. And one was my sister. Who for some reason was not at practice.
What I didn't know is that my sister had a doctor's appointment that morning and was very much alive and getting a tetnus booster. I also didn't know that the police were men and don't understand the difference between blonde and strawberry blonde. The dead girl was a strawberry blonde. Our friend Sarah.
My sister was never the same after that. We lived in a middle class neighborhood. Kid's didn't die in high school. But she did and no one ever knew how to deal with the kids. I don't think my sister ever felt safe again. Maybe that was why she was so susceptible to this cult (ok religion that I don't understand). Maybe that is why she checked out of our family and has yet to return.
The odd thing is that the class before my sister was the last class for many years to graduate without a death. Another boy from my sister's class drowned three days before graduation. A boy in the next class was killed in a plane crash. The next class had a suicide. My class had two boys decapitated in a car crash right before prom. The class after me had a girl killed by her boyfriend.
It just kept happening.
Even white bread America isn't safe to grow up in.
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It is my sister's birthday today. She is 29 years old. I know that isn't old. But man I feel older because she is that age. And I am still 25. We are getting to be awfully adult ages. We really should stop acting 5 years old. Any day now.
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Last night I had to by gas in order to get home. I stop at the station and it denies my debit card. My card is old and I think the strip is worn down. So I go to another station to try again and it still doesn't work. The attendant runs it and gets an error code.
I wondered if we were overdrawn, but that just didn't seem possible. I tried to call my husband but he didn't answer. So I start to drive home. I think I have enough to get home but I have doubts about having enough to drive back to a gas station. I have no cash. Which I hate. I have fantasies about calling in "out of gas" to work in the morning. J finally answers the phone. And I realize that my card is expired.
See it expires 11/03. I assumed that meant 11/30/03 but apparently no. It means at any given day during the month of November.
Well shit.
So he meets me at another gas station (9 cents more a gallon than the one I was at before!) and uses his card.
I go home and activate the new card that the bank had sent me. The one I just kept leaving in the dry sink. The one I was not motivated to do anything with because it looks exactly like the one I already had.
Except for that damn expiration date.
